


A Cool, Cool Man

by whaleofatime



Category: Free!
Genre: Australian Wildfire Appeal, Elemental Magic, M/M, Magical Realism, Minor Injuries, Stress at the start chill at the end, set in australia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-08
Updated: 2020-03-08
Packaged: 2021-02-28 17:20:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,283
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23060842
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/whaleofatime/pseuds/whaleofatime
Summary: Only Rin could be romantic enough to plan a picnic date in the woods and also be unlucky enough that he finds himself with an unconscious Sousuke as wildfires rage around him.Half-cocked and whole-hearted, Haru and Makoto barrel into the flames with half an idea and a whole lot of determination to pull off a daring rescue. Worst wildfires in living memory or no, Australia ain't seen nothing yet.Charity request for the exceedingly lovely svana_vrika!
Relationships: Matsuoka Rin/Yamazaki Sousuke, Nanase Haruka/Tachibana Makoto
Comments: 10
Kudos: 38





	A Cool, Cool Man

**Author's Note:**

  * For [svana_vrika](https://archiveofourown.org/users/svana_vrika/gifts).



Pride comes before fall, yes, but Rin’s really got to question the karmic fairness of things going  _ this  _ fantastically wrong. Whose baby did he spit on in his past life? What high horse was he on that he’s now sitting in the middle of a bushfire, sweating through his shirt with the effort of fending off the flames, an unconscious Sousuke in his arms looking like the loveliest ash-smudged man in this whole wide world?

Whose teapot did he piss in, that karma now has him trying not to die during what was supposed to be a romantic picnic and a casual flex of his fire-bending ability?

His own, Rin thinks morosely. He pissed the pot and now he’s going to die because he wanted his boyfriend to think he was cool, and Sousuke isn’t even conscious to give him a dressing down or make out with him. 

_ God _ . If he was by himself, Rin’s pretty sure he could deflect enough of the fire to run to safety, but why is Sousuke so damn handsome and well-built and  _ heavy _ , and why did he push Rin out of the way when that massive branch came tumbling down, and  _ why hadn't they just gone to the beach instead? _

Rin is a ball of anxiety, sweat, and regret, but the cavalry’s coming, probably. On the edges of the wildfire he can feel Ozzy firefighters struggling to bend back the flames, but heading towards him is a hissing, spitting ball of hot, hot water, which means that Makoto did get his text going  _ help!!! _ and his GPS location, and managed to tear Haru out of the sea for long enough that they’re now nearby, mounting a rescue.

Rin cannot  _ wait _ to see Haru’s dumb dead-fish-eyed face calling him an idiot, and for Makoto to look long-suffering and sweetly-apologetic in the background.

Not for the first time, Rin finds that despite being a fire elemental magician, fire is honestly just the absolute  _ worst _ .

  
  


-

The initial plan had been to pull up a blanket of sea and just barrel into and through the bush fires. It would be as easy as breathing for Haru, to call up a localised tsunami and just drown out Mallacoota. For better or for worse, Haru’s terrifying powers are most fully manifest in the ocean, and there’s a whole lot of it here in the little picturesque seaside village Rin had dragged them to.

Double dates were hard to pull off all too often, given the tendency for overcompetitiveness to get out of hand when Haru, Sousuke, and Rin get a bottle of wine between them, and Makoto’s powerful ability to accidentally romance every waiter in sight when a little tipsy. They’d had breakfast together, and no one had choked and died mid-pancake-eating competition, and they had split; Rin and Sousuke into the woods, and Haru and Makoto to the beach.

Haru fondly thinks Rin is an idiot for a variety of reasons; the biggest reason that morning was that Rin had chosen to go to the woods when he could have had a topless boyfriend by the sea instead.

When they got the emergency text and saw the people of Mallacoota run down to the beach because a sudden updraft had blown the fire across district lines in minutes, Haru thinks that Rin is a damn idiot for having the gift of the world’s worst timing.

The sea had come up behind him before he had given it much thought, and it’s only Makoto’s grounding hand at his shoulder that snaps him out of it. Haru spins to glare at Makoto for stopping him, tense and stressed and deeply, deeply worried.

Makoto looks back at him, twice as concerned but half as panicked, always calmest in times of greatest trouble. “Haru-chan,” he says, voice soft and solemn, and it’s the greatest magic of all that that’s all that’s needed for Haru to settle back into himself. “If you dump the sea on the fire, you’re going to drown everything that’s smaller than a person, and you’re going to salt the earth. You can’t, Haru, we need to think of something else.”

Haru wonders what salted earth feels like to an earthbender; probably not unlike what a spilled oil tanker feels like to him but worse, because the ocean is so, so big compared to the ground. Like a stain that would not leave, an ache that would not go.

Okay, so that’s their last resort. Looking up and feeling around for the currents of water in the air, Haru frowns. It’s so dry and arid; his throat feels like the ash that’s flying around. 

God. One of the strongest waterbenders of his generation, and Haru is utterly hopeless. 

“I can draw the salt out,” Haru says, thinking over his skillset. “Just water, and dump it on the fire. I won’t salt your ground, Makoto.” He would  _ never. _

Makoto smiles at him, even if he looks strained. “Anything that’s living underground, anything small that gets knocked out of the trees, they can’t handle that. And you’re going to have to keep the water there for a while, to  _ really _ make sure that the fire’s out. Haru-chan, I think we might have to settle for a really small-scale rescue, and I think we might need to settle with… me.”

They had been hurrying towards Rin’s location from the moment the text had come through, and by now they’re flat out running towards the ghastly orange-gray inferno. Despite all this building urgency, though, Haru is so singularly outraged at the concept of  _ Makoto  _ and  _ settling _ that while he’s gathering himself enough to shout he almost trips and brain himself on the pavement.

He does actually trip, but the ground shifts ever so sweetly under his feet to catch him, and when he looks up it’s Makoto looking at him, and god.

_ Settle _ .

Haru blinks the angry away. “You always were better at rescuing,” is what he says instead of an angry rant, because at the end of the day, that’s the truest thing. “You’re going to put out the fires by burying them, right?”

Makoto nods, looking a little uncertain. “I don’t think I can do enough to put all of the fire out, but if I can just…. Move them away a bit, we can get Rin and Sousuke out.” 

“Okay,” Haru agrees, feeling a bit of a spring in his step. They’re rushing up the foothills now, and the houses here are nicer and fancier, and they are nice and fancy enough that a few of them even have pools….

“I’ll get us in quick.”

It’s not a cloak of sea, but a shawl of pool water isn’t too bad.

-

This is how they arrive, stinking of chlorine in a massive bubble of water that hisses and spits and sublimes into vapour as they rush through a wall of flames. It’s a tricky balancing act; Haru keeps needing to reroute water fizzing away as steam to come back as liquid. It's not a retention rate of 100%, which is why he can get them in but not out, but even reaching Rin’s last known location is going to be tight at this rate. Makoto meanwhile gently flips over the soil as they go, burying the on-fire leaf litter and trying to clear a path that both people and wildlife can use to try and get away.

He’s got two koalas hanging from his front, and Haru’s channeling mineral water from a bottle to try and soothe burns, letting the water go where the body needed it. This is the most challenged he’s ever felt while water-bending, all delicacy and the softest of touches. It helps that he just needs to keep them safe and not struggle to put out the fire itself; Makoto burying it under means there’s less litter to burn and the embers don’t get air to flare up, and Haru thinks that oh, my, skilled earthbenders are a damn sight more useful in a wildfire situation than even a supernaturally-gifted waterbender.

“Oh, sweetheart,” Haru hears Makoto whisper behind him, and when he turns, Makoto is helping a wallaby climb into the hood of his jacket.

“Haru-chan, if you can?” Makoto asks, and they probably don’t have enough water and this is so foolhardy and a thousand things might go wrong, but.

Haru just cracks open another bottle of water to let it swirl out and onto the poor little almost-kangaroo.

He very dearly hopes that the firemen they’d passed briefly on the road here had understood his garbled English when he’d asked for back-up. Looking at Makoto and his menagerie and imagining adding Rin and Sousuke to the group, well.

If they survive this, Haru thinks grimly, they’re certainly going to make an impression.

-

It takes less than 15 minutes, probably, but felt closer to an hour before they finally burst into a clearing where Rin, Sousuke, and a sad, charred picnic blanket and basket are waiting. 

_ Everyone _ is sweating hideously, and Haru will not be admitting to _anyone_ that he’s redirecting sweat into the safety bubble either, but things really are rather dire.

Rin looks about 15 years older, jaw clenched tight in focus as he wills the fire away from them. It’s raging, licking high up invisible walls, and that’s a nightmare if Haru’s ever seen one. It’s always, always easier to wield than to restrain, which is why Haru could sooner call up a tsunami than drain a delta. They step closer to him and Haru expands the globe up and out, the water whizzing round and round them to buy them some space, some time, as Makoto absent-mindedly puts out embers while checking in on Sousuke.

“He might have a concussion, if he knocked his head,” Makoto says softly, after checking Sousuke’s pulse and gently tapping his cheeks. “Rin, how are you?”

“Been better,” Rin forces out through gritted teeth, tension migraine making the sight of his own damn element deeply unpleasant. “Been worse. I can’t hold on much longer.” He’s about 2.5 minutes away from passing out, he doesn’t say. 

Too much moisture is being lost, and Haru’s not super pleased that there’s no army of firefighters coming after them yet. It’s not ideal, but if the choice is between calling for the sea or having all his friends die, it’s not much of a choice at all.

It’s like one of the koalas  _ hears _ him low-key condemning all the wildlife here to a damp death, as it turns its head from where it was pressed to Makoto’s chest, and screeches at him like an absolute demon. 

That snaps the tension, somehow, so abrupt and so nonsensical that it manages to break even Rin’s concentration enough that he looks around to see what’s happening. When the picture arranges itself in his head, Rin can’t help the laugh that bursts out of him. “Haru, why in the  _ hell _ is a koala angry with you?”

_ I think that thing might be a psychic _ is a bit of a leap even for Haru, so he just clicks his tongue and looks away.

Even Makoto’s laughing, soft and only a little manic. “It’s okay, Ko-chan, it’s okay,” he soothes the fuzzy thing clinging to his sweatshirt. “Rin, I’ve banked all the earth around this little clearing, I think. If you stop bending, do you think you can carry Sousuke when we make a run for it?”

The prospect of physical strain instead of elemental is so welcome a thought that Rin already feels his muscles unknotting. “Mako, I could lift you too while I’m at it,” he says, teeth flashing and feeling like gosh, maybe he won’t actually die today.

Makoto just nods, and gently hauls Sousuke up. The man mumbles something, which is probably a good sign, and Makoto carefully moves him around until Sousuke is slumped against Rin’s back, ready for a quick piggy-back. “Okay, okay.” Makoto takes a deep breath, chokes a little on ash, and feels vaguely grateful that he’s never been  _ too _ scared of fire. “I’m going to run down the path Haru-chan and I made, so please follow as close as you can. I’ll make it bigger as I go, but it’s going to be hot, so if you two can do whatever you can to stop us from getting burned, that’ll be great.” He gets up and heads towards where they came from, and starts taking off his shoes.

This is going to be unpleasant, but no earthbender in their right mind would keep their shoes on during an emergency, and hopefully the callouses will keep off the worst of the burns (if only ash and embers considered themselves earth!).

He hears Haru make a noise of protest right behind him, but there’s not enough water to spare for Haru to protect his feet when he needs to protect their skin and lungs and heads, so this is how it is, this is how it goes.

Makoto steps onto the hot, hot earth, digs his toes deeper into agony, and 

_ runs _ .

-

The Australian firefighters think  _ you have got to be kidding me _ , when the ground starts shaking underneath their feet. First, the worst wildfire the continent has ever seen, and now an earthquake’s come for them? Lord god.

Reality is somehow odder even than that, as first a tall sweet-faced man absolutely festooned in small mammals bursts through a wall of flame, followed by another odd man who has no less than four kookaburras on his head and a whole host of snakes hanging from his belt loops, the group coming to a close with a man screaming loudly about centipedes as he carries someone on his back.

“-all I’m saying,  _ Haru _ , is why the  _ hell _ did I get the bugs, oh my god, I hate you-”

“Rin, it’s not my fault that birds look at you and think you’re a predator, just focus-”

“-damn beetles in my ears, this is the worst date, this is worse than the time you challenged Sou to a drinking competition and he threw up in the movie theater, on my  _ lap _ -”

None of the firefighters know what they’re saying, but they are first responders for a reason, so first, they respond.

-

Sitting at the back of an ambulance with his feet slathered in two tubs’ worth of cold cream, Makoto just grins sheepishly when Haru smacks him lightly over the head.

“Makoto, if you try to put out even a little more fire, I’m going to be really mad,” Haru scolds him, sitting on the ground with half his body soaking wet, having called up a bit of ocean just for him. 

“I can’t help it, Haru-chan!” he protests. Like with most of the world, the firefighters here were all hyper-competent firebenders, but for this scale of a disaster, an, ah, interdisciplinary approach was better. He’s still deeply embarrassed to have had the fire chief come first to shout at them for endangering themselves in the fire, and then to interrogate him on how he manipulated the soil to choke out the flames, all with Rin translating.

A cadre of earthbenders from other arms of the emergency response service are coming, Makoto understood that much, but while they wait, he just wants to help.

Sousuke had woken up pretty much as soon as they had gotten him onto a gurney in an ambulance, looking sweetly dazed and heroic with streaks of ash on his handsome face. “Wha-?” had been his first word post-consciousness, and a panicked “Rin?!” had been his second. 

Rin, of course, had already started crying by then, and had flung himself onto the poor, poor man, and in that embarrassing configuration that Haru took a dozen pictures off, they were carted off to the hospital.  _ Dinner’s on me tonight!  _ Rin had shouted at them before the doors were closed on him, and that’s so _dumb_ , because as far as Haru’s concerned, all dinners from now until eternity were on Rin.

The paramedics had wanted to take Makoto to hospital too, because his feet were badly burned, but Makoto had said he needed a little more time to settle down. ‘Settling down’ means different things to different people, but for Makoto it means that he’s on the verge of a complete physical and mental breakdown, and if his feet left the ground, even for a short ambulance ride, he would become completely unmoored.

So they’re here, still, a ways away from the line of the fire, and Haru idly wonders if he can’t make some sort of water slide for Makoto to take to get to the emergency room, a river close enough to the ground that his fingers could brush against it as he’s whisked away to safety and help. He had used every drop of water available to protect everyone’s lungs and throat, keep them cool and wet and unburned, trusting Rin to hold back enough of the fire to save their skins (literally).

It’s a victory in every way that matters; they saved Rin and Sousuke, the firefighters now have a new strategy for dealing with the fire, a lot of animals got out with them and more are using their path to rush for safety, and the worst damages sustained are the red-raw burns and blisters on Makoto’s feet.

It feels like a personal defeat, is Haru’s opinion, as he cycles water around Makoto’s feet to draw out the heat, a masterful radiator made of exquisite bending.

(Not so exquisite in the middle of an emergency, but what else is new.)

A hand lands on his hair, and Haru startles despite himself. He looks up, and Makoto’s looking down at him very fondly. “It’s going to be okay, Haru-chan,” Makoto tells him, though what Makoto thinks is okay is anyone’s guess. Everything, probably. “This just means that you finally have an excuse to buy that luxury foot spa tub you’ve been wanting.”

Haru thinks viciously that he’s going to buy a dozen of them and put them in every room of their home, thinks that he’ll keep them fully stocked with spring water and fresh flowers so that Makoto(‘s feet) will never have to remember a day of pain in their lives again, jack them up with so much of his magic that Makoto gets better than new, even.

For now, though, he just reaches up to twine his fingers with the hand that had been in his hair, squeezing against the fine tremors he can feel. He presses a kiss to Makoto’s wrist bone, and presses his cheek to the back of Makoto’s hand. He’s safe. They’re all safe, and it’s going to be okay.

“I’m going to flood the balcony when we get back, and not even God’s going to stop me,” Haru says after a long, comfortable pause, just because he can.

“ _ Haru-chan!” _ shouted in that exact tone of fond-and-stressed is absolutely the best thing he’s ever heard.

-

(The picture of Makoto rushing out of flames covered in half a wildlife sanctuary’s worth of animals makes it into international news, and the server for the Australia Zoo Wildlife Hospital had crashed when Makoto had shyly suggested everyone donate to them during one of his many, many guest appearances on Australian talk shows.

The absolute, most unbearably adorable outcome of all was Makoto being allowed to name all of the animals they managed to rescue that day, and the picture of him in the veterinary hospital with Ko-chan swaddled in his arms and Hime-chan the snake coiling around his arm is the only proof that Haru’s ever needed about the absolute miracle that is Tachibana Makoto.)

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> This might be my worst summary so far, honest to God.
> 
> Thank you to svana for making a charity request and providing a hell of a cool prompt! It took some brainpower to figure out how a very powerful bender would deal with an emergency in a way that takes into account real-world limitations, which is why this story ended up being a little serious-er than usual. Hope you enjoyed this fic, and you can find me here on [ tumblr](https://cetaceans-pls.tumblr.com) if you too have niche fic dreams you'd like to see fulfilled while supporting a good cause!


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